Chapel
by YellowRosesAndHearts
Summary: They know that Jeffries will be fine, but she wonders how long it will take for Vera to be." That scene in the church in "Officer down". Spoilers for that episode. One-shot. Kat/Vera


_**In the last **__**ep**__**, "officer down" in which Jeffries is shot while in a convenient store as Nick waits outside, there is a little scene with Vera and Kat in the chapel alone, and he looks tragic and sad, and Kat seems like she doesn't know what to say to him. I omitted some of the dialogue, but this is the gist. There's not enough **__**fic**__** about people who aren't Lilly or Scotty (both of whom I love, but still) so this is something. : )**_

Kat Miller has always had issues believing in god.

For one thing, the idea seems entirely illogical. The idea that one guy resides in the clouds (to hell with gravity) welding a scepter and seeing everything. Or that he has set up a collection of complicated parameters to weed out the worthy and unworthy to go to heaven and hell. For another thing, people made a supposedly benevolent god sound awfully vindictive. Gays need not apply. Or if you happened to be brought up Jewish, or Muslim, and stuck with that, you were equally screwed. She has always had trouble buying it.

Still, for some reason or another, Kat has always found chapels comforting. There is something in the rainbow stained glass windows, the dim lights, the red candles and insence. She is standing near the altar, next to Vera, who is gazing at something in the ceiling with a far away expression.

He is wearing the same rumpled blue suit he wore twelve hours ago, when he leaned over Jeffries' body in the convenient store. There are hard lines around his eyes and normally merry mouth that she is sure weren't there when he left work yesterday. Heavy bags drag beneath his deeply set gray eyes, and he uneasily shifts his feet against the carpet.

Kat feels like she's never met Nick before, or at least not this Nick—absent the perpetual teasing in the eyes, the touch of swagger and hint of chauvinism in his walk. He is a shadow of the Nick she knows, stoop-shouldered and inexorably defeated, and she has no idea what to say to him.

"You should go, get some sleep. We'll be fine here."

She is trying to sound soothing because she feels it, feels an unexpected shock of tenderness for him. And yet tenderness is not in their relationship, and finding that emotion to convey to Vera, of all people, feels uncomfortable and almost impossible. She almost wants to hug him, but she can't imagine doing it.

"I can't," he says, and in that moment he looks so tragic that she wishes she could be anyone else, to comfort him. She is not maternal, except with Veronica, and Veronica is not a six-foot-tall heavy set white man nearly eight years older than she is. She wishes she were Will or the boss, both of whom know much more about Nick than she does. Or if she were Scotty, she would be able to reach out, and put a comforting hand on Vera's shoulder. The two of them have a chest-bumping man-relationship, to be sure, but Scotty is the most emotionally open of any of them, and in this moment, she envies him.

"You should go home," she presses, forgetting where he lives.

Vera turns suddenly, looking away from the ceiling for the first time to see her full on. He is not crying, but his chin quivers, and his eyes are swollen, and it steals her breath away. "It doesn't feel right, him being here, me being there."

She can't explain the sudden urge she gets to offer him her pull-out couch, if he should need it, and has to bite her lip to keep herself from doing it. She doesn't know Jeffries very well, at least not as well as she knows Scotty, or even Lil, but she knows that only he of all of them would have been willing to take Vera in. She certainly wouldn't have been—his propensity to eat her food and ask probing questions about her personal life would only be magnified if they were to share a living space.

But she wants that Vera back, so much and so violently that it shakes her. She wants him to say something stupid and sexist without thinking, she wants him to ask her when the last time she got laid was, or anything like that, with that cat that got the canary smile. They know that Jeffries will be fine, but she wonders how long it will take for Vera to be.

Nick looks up into the ceiling again, and Kat moves closer to him, falling silent. She can't be Scotty, or Will, or even Lil, with her bottomless reserves of empathy. She can only be Kat Miller—cynical, emotionally closed off--but she can be with him. She reaches out her elbow to touch his, through her coat, and his suit jacket. It's the best she can do.

He looks down for a second, studies her, and a ghost of a smile crosses his face. He nods and turns back to look up, head cocked far back. Kat adopts the same dazed look Nick wears and peers up too, praying that whomever he is looking toward so intently in the ceiling might break the habit of an eternity and reach down, with divine hands, to clasp Vera on the shoulder.


End file.
